Course Projects

All participants must complete a final project as part of their course requirements. The goal of the project is to try a technology tool or technique in your teaching – a technology-related tool or technique that you haven’t used before - and document what happened. You will describe what your class was like before, what you tried, what happened, and what you think you will do next. Next steps may be to make some changes before trying it again, trying it with a new group, and the like.

The weekly reflections on your blog can be helpful as you create your report.

What are we supposed to do?

Project goal: Plan and put into action a change related to technology use in your classroom.

Describe the student population, setting, course goal, student needs (Week 2).
Identify a problem/issue in your class that could be solved or improved with technology (Week 4).
Do research related to the problem/solution(s) you identify (Week 4-5).
Create a plan for investigating the problem and trying different solutions (Week 5). The change should be something that you are not doing now.
Carry out the plan (Week 6-7).
Document and report on the change you made and the results of the change, and share the report with your partner for comments and suggestions (Week 8).
Write a final report (Week 9).

Helpful Resources for your Project

Project Report information from this page in a PDF file. For those who will NOT be teaching during this course, use this Project Plan information.

Project Planning Guide - Word file. Fill this out each week; it will help you prepare for your project and the final report.

Project checklist for peer review - Word file. Please fill this out and email it back to your partner, with a cc to Deborah.

Final Report Templates (Word format)

Project Report Template - Word file. Please use this to share with your peer reviewer and for your project report.
Rubric for project report - Word file. This gives you more details about how the projects will be evaluated.
Project Report Checklist - Word file. Please turn this self-evaluation in with your project report.
Project Plan Template -Word file (for those who are not teaching now). Use this to share with your peer reviewer and for your Project Plan report.
Project Plan Rubric - Word file (for those who are not teaching now). This helps you know how the plan will be evaluated.
Project plan checklist for peer review - Word file. Please fill this out and email it back to your partner, with a cc to Deborah.

If you had students try different websites, please include the titles and URLs in your resource list. The articles in the Resource section below offer some examples.

Some Additional Resources about Action Research

This site offers a broad overview of action research - definitions and examples - as set in a US school. It includes a number of additional articles, as well:
http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/sod/car/carhomepage.html
This is a report from an actual action research project with English language learners:
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Snell-Interaction.html